Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life

By Daniel Joseph Kirwan

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• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547182290

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Daniel Joseph Kirwan

Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life

EAN 8596547182290

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

Cover

Titlepage

Text

"

TO

Samuel L.M. Barlow, Esq.,

OF

NEW YORK CITY,

A

True Gentleman in Every Quality and Duty of Life,

THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED,

AS A

SLIGHT TESTIMONY

TO THE

Unvarying Friendship borne by him for the author

PREFACE.

In offering this volume to the Public, the result of a year's experience and labor, I must indeed feel gratified, and more than rewarded, if any of those who may peruse its pages shall find in them a tithe of the pleasure which I enjoyed in journeying in and about the nooks, crannies, and curious places, of what may be justly called the greatest and most populous City of the Modern World.

Believing that a Metropolis of Three and a Half Millions of people should be observed and described, if observed and described at all, in a large and comprehensive sense, in order that a thorough knowledge of it may be obtained by those who will do me the honor of turning the leaves of this book, I have not hesitated to take my readers into places which they might shrink from visiting alone, and which are rarely or ever seen by the stranger, in London. Therefore have I sketched its Haunts of Vice, Misery, and Crime, as well as its fairer and brighter aspects, with no faltering in my purpose, so that the American people might see London as I saw it, and as it exists To-Day.

The material employed in making the book was gathered from personal observation, while acting as a Special Correspondent of the New York World, in London, and I cannot do less than make an acknowledgment of the kindness of its Editor, Mr. Manton Marble, by whose permission I have used some portions of the matter embodied in this work.

DANIEL JOSEPH KIRWAN.

Hartford, August 1st, 1870.

One More Unfortunate Frontispiece

Grand Staircase, Buckingham Palace—Illuminated Title-Page.

Bird's-Eye View of London,

Initial Letter,

The London Stone,

Thank you, Sir,

The Rock and Chain, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Sword, &c., Tail Piece,

Entrance to Docks,

I Don't Think it Will Hurt me,

Forest, Initial Letter,

Buckingham Palace (Full Page,)

Portrait of Queen Victoria,

John Brown Exercising the Queen,

Fancy Sketch, Tail Piece,

Lion on Guard, Initial Letter,

Purty Bill Showing us in,

Wont you Take Something?

Snake Swallowing,

Bilking Bet takes the Chair,

Teddy the Kinchin's Song,

Explosive Materials, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Cogers' Hall, Debating Club,

Snake in the Grass, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Conservative Club House,

Carlton Club House,

Oxford and Cambridge Club House,

United Service Club House,

Architectural Sketch, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Westminster Abbey,

Shakespeare's Tomb,

Tomb of Milton,

Tomb of Mary Queen of Scots,

Coronation Chair,

Gauntleted Hand and Sword, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Victoria Theatre in the New Cut, (Full Page,)

Rag Fair,

A Cell Window, Initial Letter,

The Last Execution at Newgate,

Fetters and Chain, Tail Piece,

Broken Wheel, Initial Letter,

Doctors' Commons,

Eagle and Snake, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

A Bohemian Carouse,

A Water Scene, Tail Piece,

Tower of London (Full Page,)

Initial Letter,

Traitors' Gate,

The Crown Jewels,

Imperial Orb, Ampulla and other Jewels,

The State Salt-Cellars,

Cannon, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

The Cadgers' Meal,

Raft Timber, Tail Piece,

The Old Oak, Initial Letter,

Bathing in Hyde Park,

The Labyrinth,

The Crystal Palace,

The Promenade, Tail Piece,

Fort and Water Scene, Initial Letter,

Portrait of the Prince of Wales,

Prince and Cabman,

Broken Wagon and Dead Horse, Tail Piece,

Blood-Hounds in the Leash, Initial Letter,

Portrait of Lady Mordaunt,

Portrait of the Duke of Hamilton,

Portrait of the Marquis of Waterford,

Portrait of the Marquis of Hastings,

Mounted Cannon, Initial Letter,

Houses of Parliament (Full Page,)

Portrait of William Ewart Gladstone

The Legislative Bar-Maid,

Portrait of John Bright,

The Student, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

"Could you Make it a Tanner?"

The Speaker of the House,

First Lord of the Admiralty,

Portrait of Robert E. Lowe,

Gladstone Speaking in the House of Commons (Full Page,)

Landscape, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

The Pocket-Book Game,

Steam Frigate, Tail Piece,

A Broadside, Initial Letter,

The Sewer Hunter,

Blood-Hound, Tail Piece,

Island, Initial Letter,

Cats Receiving Rations,

The Great Porter Tun,

Initial Letter,

The Harvard Crew (Full Page,)

Bridge, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

The Oxford Crew, (Full Page,)

The University Race, (Full Page,)

Beautiful Craft, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Hospital Ship Dreadnought,

Jonathan Wild's Skeleton,

Initial Letter,

Coke Peddler,

Bum Boatman,

"I Gets it for Cigar Stumps,"

Street Acrobats,

Punch and Judy,

Initial Letter,

Nelson's Monument,

Damaged Tree, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Nursery in the Foundling Hospital,

Washing the Waifs,

Landscape, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Breakfast Stall, Covent Garden Market (Full Page,)

The Orange Market,

Going to Market, Tail Piece,

Fancy Piece, Initial Letter,

Wild and Desolate, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Foreign Cafe in Coventry Street

Canteen of the Alhambra,

The Old Sinner,

Rough and Ready, Tail Piece,

In the Haymarket,

Initial Letter,

St. Paul's Cathedral,

Sharp-Shooter, Initial Letter,

"Beautiful Miss Neilson,"

A Gin Public in the New Cut,

A Gallery of the Vic,

Putting on Airs, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

An Auction at Billingsgate Fish Market, (Full Page,)

Initial Letter,

Lincoln's Inn,

Fancy Sketch, Tail Piece,

An English Oak, Initial Letter,

Bankers' Eating-House,

The Bank of England,

"I Began to Perspire,"

Carpet-Bag, Tail Piece,

London Bridge, (Full Page,)

Forest Scene, Initial Letter,

Temple Bar, Fleet Street,

The New Blackfriars Bridge,

Bridge and Water Scene, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Windsor Castle,

Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Loading the Prison Van,

Detective Irving,

Before the Lord Mayor,

Bible and Hand, Initial Letter,

Portrait of Spurgeon,

Portrait of Father Ignatius,

Lothair (Marquis of Bute,)

Ruins, Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Scott's in the Haymarket,

The Midnight Mission, (Full Page,)

Skittles and the Princess Mary,

A Row in Cremorne,

Sword and Purse, Initial Letter,

Portrait of Mabel Grey,

Portrait of Anonyma,

Portrait of Baby Hamilton,

Mabel Grey at Home,

Portrait of Alice Gordon,

Snake and Dove, Initial Letter,

A Meal at a Cheap Lodging House, (Full Page,)

"Damnable Jack,"

Statue of George Peabody,

Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Old Smudge, the Cabby,

"A Hansom Cab,"

"One Hundred Rats in Nine Minutes,"

The Rat-Catcher,

"Paddy's Goose,"

Waiting for the Tide,

Ruins, Tail Piece,

The Times Office,

The Sub-Editors' Room, Daily Telegraph Office,

Portrait of James Anthony Froude,

Portrait of Algernon Charles Swinburne,

Portrait of John Stewart Mill,

Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli,

Portrait of John Ruskin,

Portrait of Charles Kingsley,

Portrait of Anthony Trollope,

Tail Piece,

Initial Letter,

Half-Penny Soup House, (Full Page,)

A Pawn-Broker's Shop,

A Third Class Railway Carriage,

Tail Piece,

Map of London,

---

CHAPTER I.

THE MISTRESS OF THE WORLD.

I N the civilized world perhaps such another sight cannot be witnessed, as that which greets the eye from the great Cupola of St. Paul's, when the view is taken on a bright summer morning, after daybreak has settled on the leads and huge gilded cross of this, the most mighty of English Cathedrals.

I saw this vast expanse of brick, stone, and mortar, one delicious, but hazy September morning, from the outer circle of the dome, and I shall never forget that peopled metropolis which lay swarming below me like a vast human hive.

For a radius of ten miles, the roofs and spires of countless religious edifices, dwelling-houses, banks, the tall cones of storied monuments, the delicate tracery of a forest of slender masts, and the smoky chimneys of innumerable breweries, manufactories, and gas-houses, met my vision, which had already begun to weary long before any of the individual characteristics of the British metropolis had segregated themselves from the aggregate mass.

Directly before me, and almost at my feet, lay the turbid Thames, winding in and out sinuously under bridges, and heaving from the labor which the paddles of numerous steam craft impressed in its dirty yellow bosom. These small steamers were of a black and red, mixed, color, and it was only through a glass that I could discern where the two colors met and divided. Passing under the huge stone bridges, their smoke stacks seemed to break in two parts for an instant as they shot under an arch of the huge spans of London or Waterloo Bridges; gracefully as a gentleman bows to his partner in a quadrille, and then the black funnels went back to their original erect but raking position with great deliberation.

I had secured an eyrie in the top of St. Paul's at an early hour with the aid of a greasy half crown, which I had slipped to an old toothless verger with his silver-tipped wand, and he readily gratified my wish to allow me egress from the Whispering gallery which encircles the interior dome of the Cathedral, to a point where, giddily, I might lean out and look all over the great city.

It's as good as my place is worth, sir, said he, to let you look out here. A man who was a little light headed from drinking tumbled from this window some years ago, and was broken to pieces on the cobble stones below.

The danger did not prevent me from looking long and greedily at the splendid coup d'[oe]il.

stone

THE LONDON STONE.

Far up the river to the left the queerly shaped toy turrets and massive ramparts and quadrangles of the Tower broke through the morning haze in shapely and artistic masses, and at the back of the green spot of grass which surmounts Tower Hill, the square, solid, and substantial looking Mint showed where Her Majesty's sworn servants were already at work employed in making counterfeit presentments of her features for circulation in trade and commerce. The Norman tower and flanking buttresses of St. Saviour's, Southwark, next came in range, followed by the long oval glass roof of the Eastern Railway Terminus, facing Cannon street, where is erected London Stone, upon which Jack Cade sat in triumph before the dirty, noisy, rabble, which had followed his fortunes; and now I can see Guy's Hospital with its hundred windows, the Corinthian Royal Exchange in Cornhill, the massive Guildhall where many a bloated Britisher has fed on the fat of the land; the Mansion House in which the Lord Mayor occasionally does petty offenders the honor of sentencing them to the Bridewell; and now the view enlarges to the southward, and the eye takes in the fine Holborn Viaduct, lately honored by the Queen's presence; Barclay and Perkin's massive caravanserai for the brewing of beer, and the gray stones of St. Sepulchre's where the passing bell is always tolled for the condemned Newgate prisoner just before execution. The square, gray blocks of this fortress of crime gloom in an unpitying way below me, and there now is the court yard of Christ's Hospital with the gowned and bare headed school lads at their morning game of foot ball, and their shouts peal upward, even up as high as the dome of St. Paul's, like the chimes of merry music. The great piles of Somerset house and the Custom House frown down on the busy river, and the sound of the bell of St. Clement Dane's in the Strand, striking six o'clock, mingles with the mighty thunder whirr of the incoming train from Dover, which dashes like a demon over the Charing Cross bridge and into its station. Structure after structure rises on the retina, the Treasury Buildings and Horse Guards in Parliament street, Marlborough House, the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, the University College, the Nelson and York Monuments, the splendid club houses in Pall Mall and St. James; Apsley House and Hyde Park with its lakes of silvery water, Westminster Abbey, the Clock and Victoria Towers surmounting the Parliament Houses which overhang the Thames, Lambeth Palace, the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Dignitary of the English State Church and Milbank Penitentiary down in dusty Westminster, and by the way this prison with its eight towers looks like a cruet stand and its towers certainly represent the caster bottles. With its parterre of trees in the central square, the quadrangles of Chelsea Hospital, and the dome of the Palm House in Kensington Garden next come under inspection, and finally I became weary in endeavoring to pierce the haze which the sun had broken into annoying fragments, and failing to penetrate farther than Vauxhall bridge, I give up the task and draw in my head after a last look at the Catherine and West India docks, bewildered and confused by the very immensity of wealth and population which is centered and aggregated below, under and in the shadow of St. Paul's, the Mother Church of Great Britain.

tip

THANK YOU, SIR.

The verger says with a weak and wheezy voice:

This is a werry great city, sir. They do say as how there's more nor three millions of hooman beings in this 'ere metropolis, and how they all gets a living is a blessed puzzle to me. I gets an occasional sixpence, and Americans seem to be more generous than any other visitors. Thank you, sir.

London is a wonderful city in many ways. The year 1866 brought the number of the inhabitants to the total of 3,186,000. This is a population larger than that of Pekin, and as large and a half as that of London's great rival, Paris. It has a greater number of edifices devoted to religious worship than the Eternal City, Rome. Its commerce exceeds that of New York, Glasgow, Cork, Havre, and Bremen in gross. It sends abroad missionaries of all known sects, to convert the heathen and blackamoor, and for them and their wives there is a larger amount of money collected in London than could by any possibility be subscribed in all the other great cities of the world combined for a like purpose. It numbers among its population more prostitutes and unfortunate females than Paris, there being according to a calculation made by a former bishop of Oxford, 30,000 of this wretched class, alone, who are strictly professionals.

London has work houses to accommodate 150,000 paupers under the parochial system, for which the residents or freeholders of every parish in the metropolitan district are taxed at an annual rate of fourteen pounds ten shillings per pauper, and yet men, women, and children die of starvation, weekly, in the slums of St. Giles, Saffron Hill, Bethnal Green, and Shoreditch.

For a penny the young thief or abandoned street girl can listen to hoarse fiddling, obscene jests, and the lowest of low slang songs at some penny gaff in Whitechapel, and on a benefit night at Covent Garden, or the Haymarket, the man who is known in society will have to pay twenty-five or thirty shillings or from six to ten dollars to hear the musical warblings of a Patti or a Nillson.

There are one hundred and three hospitals in London in which all the complaints, frailties, and mishaps of poor human nature are supposed to be provided for, and yet it will be much easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, or a rich man to get a free pass into paradise, than that a poor wretch without friends or influence should be able to find a bed in an hospital, unless he can succeed by a miracle in dodging the sentinels which red tape has placed at every entrance to these vaunted institutions.

Down in the quiet and aristocratic dwellings of Pimlico, you shall find such ladies as Nelly Holmes, or Skittles, and in St. John's Wood a Mabel Gray, and in a delicious villa at Fulham, a Formosa, spending in one night's Corinthian revelry the yearly salary of a bank clerk, or hazarding at a game of cards the life-time pittance of a sewing woman. And with these painted women shall be found night after night the curled darlings of the Pall Mall clubs, some of them mere youths who bear names as old as Magna Charta, and once as spotless perhaps as those of Sidney or Hampden.

At Blanchard's, in Regent street, you may dine for a pound upon the choicest variety of dishes, cooked by a French Chef, who would scorn a gift of the Order of the Garter were it given to him without the proper culinary brevet to accompany it; and at a ham and beef shop in Oxford street you may fill yourself to repletion, taking as a basis a pork saveloy for a penny, a penn'orth of bread as a second layer, a mutton-pie for tuppence, a tart for a penny, and a pint of porter for tuppence, and then as a relish of a literary kind, you can look at the great evening paper of London, the Echo, written in the most scholarly English, without any fee. Or you can go down Camden Town way, or up into Tottenham Court Road and get a kidney pie for two pence, or an eel stew for two-pence half penny, with a dry bun for a penny, and a good glass of Bass's ale for three half pence. And then you can go to Morley's or the Langham Hotel and pick your teeth and no one will be the wiser.

For other amusements there is the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park, with the amusing elephant, the comic kangaroo, the graceful hippopotamus, the sleepy alligator, a band of music, lots of very pretty English girls, a score of impudent waiters in the restaurant to give you cold dishes when you call for hot ones, and all these delights may be enjoyed on six-penny days, and when you come out from the wild beasts, if you be thirsty it will only cost you a half-penny for a chair in the Regent's Park with its noble avenues of stately trees, and the little old woman at the little old house which juts off the gate will hand you a bottle of cooling ginger beer, a popular Cockney drink, for one penny.

In the National Gallery, a magnificent structure which faces the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the finest collections of paintings in the world is hung. Here is the noble Turner Gallery, bought for the nation and free to all for copying or inspection. Here are Corregio's, Angelos', Titians, the masterpieces of Velasquez, Murillo, Paul Veronese, the best things done by Etty, Landseer, Stanfield, Wilkie, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and nearly all of that glorious galaxy whose names have been painted too deeply in their grand canvasses ever to efface. All this is free to the public, poor and rich alike, but on Sunday, British piety bolts the lofty doors in their hapless faces.

The Londoners have the finest public parks in the world. The flower beds in Hyde Park, Battersea Park, Victoria Park, Regent's Park, Kensington Gardens, and the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, are wonderful for their beauty and constant freshness, and in the Serpentine, a clear stream in Hyde Park, there is no hindrance from bathing, though the stream laves the margin of Piccadilly, one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, where many of the richest and most powerful of the nation have their mansions.

This is London in brief. But a rapid and imperfect glance can be given of the wonderful city in the opening chapter of this book, but it is my purpose to give such details as I hope may instruct and amuse my readers, in the chapters that shall follow.

tail

---

CHAPTER II.

THE SILENT HIGHWAY.

T HE Thames, the great river of England, which enriches London with the cargoes of its thousand ships, weekly, rises in the southeastern slopes of the Cotswold Hills. For about twenty miles it belongs wholly to Gloucestershire, when for a short distance it divides that county from Wiltshire. It then separates Berkshire first from Oxfordshire, and then from Buckinghamshire. It afterward divides the counties of Surrey and Middlesex, and to its mouth those of Kent and Essex.

It falls into the sea at the Nore, which is about one hundred and ten miles nearly due east from the source, and about twice that distance measured along the windings of the river.

From having no sandbar at its mouth like the Mersey outside of Liverpool, it is navigable for sea vessels to London bridge, a distance of forty-five miles from the Nore, or nearly a fourth of its entire length. The area of the basin drained by the Thames is estimated at about six thousand five hundred miles.

The progress of half a century has made wonderful changes in the river.

Wharves have taken the place of trim gardens, and the dirty coal scow is now found where the nobleman's state barge formerly anchored.

No man, it is said, can count the national debt of England, but who can give an adequate idea of the number of millions of tons that annually pass through this highway?

The flow of land water through Teddington Weir is annually 800,000,000 gallons. This is the main body of the river within the metropolitan area, not counting the additions it receives from rain-falls and other sources.

Since the removal of the old London Bridge, the tide has been lower upon an average. Shoals have been brought to light, before unknown, and the result has been that nothing but a most constant and unremitting dredging has enabled the Thames Conservancy Board to keep the river navigable.

It requires but a glance at Blackfriar's Bridge to determine how much longer it will take to remove all the gravel from the bed of the river, and leave the solid London clay as its bed.

Every old bridge when removed leaves so many tons of gravel which eventually finds its way to the mouth of the Thames, and there forms shoals.

The channel of the river thus deepened, becomes more and more brackish every year, and it can be but a question of time, as to how and from what source the inhabitants are to derive their water supply for drinking purposes.

At the East India Docks the tide falls fourteen inches lower than formerly, and it is a fact that the low water at London Docks is lower than the low water at Sheerness, sixty miles below.

At present the tide at London Bridge has a rise of 18 feet. This river at almost any tide can float the largest ships, being 33 feet in depth at London Bridge.

The river water when found at low tide near the city is much prized for its power of self-purification, and is much in requisition for sea voyages, for the reason that it contains so large a percentage of organic matter.

There are few or no fish to be found in the Thames in the neighborhood of the city or below, owing to the impurities prevailing from drainage and sewage. This fact is particularly to be noticed in the vicinity of the town of Barking on the Thames, where is located the outfall for all the sewage of dirty London. Formerly salmon were very plentiful at the Nore, and the last one there caught sold at fifteen shillings per pound.

The Thames embankment, which was first proposed by Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, is now almost completed. This magnificent roadway, one of the finest in Europe, and which gives the modern observer some conception of what the Appian Way or Via Sacra were in the palmy day of ancient Rome, is fifty feet broad, and three and a half feet above the highest high-water mark. The embankment, which is constructed of Portland stone, and extends on the Surrey side from Westminster to Vauxhall bridge, a distance of nearly a mile, and on the Middlesex shore from Westminster to Blackfriar's bridge, a distance of fully a mile. The embankment is lined on both sides with trees which throw a pleasant shade under the summer sun, and serve to protect the thousands of people of both sexes, who seek in the evening a breath of fresh air always grateful to the tired and sweltering citizen.

At different points, on both sides of the river, the embankment has magnificent stone terraces with stone stairs to enable wayfarers, who seek transportation up and down the river, to get on and off the numerous ferry boats that swarm and ply all over the Thames from Richmond to Rotherhithe.

A description of the Thames tunnel, now closed to the public, may appropriately be included in this chapter. It was commenced by a joint stock company in 1824, after designs by Sir Isambard Brunel. Early in December, 1825, the first horizontal shaft was sunk. The difficulties encountered in the construction of the great engineering work can scarcely be overestimated. For a distance of five hundred and forty-four feet all went well, but at this point the river burst into the shaft, while the workmen were at labor, filling the excavation entirely in fifteen minutes, but fortunately no lives were lost. With great difficulty the water was pumped out and work resumed.

After adding fifty-two feet to the original length of the shaft, the turbid Thames again broke through.

Six men by this accident were smothered in the rush of angry waters, the remaining laborers escaping. Thrice again the river broke into the succeeding excavations, and at length the tunnel was completed to the Wapping side of the river.

Here a shaft was sunk from the surface to meet it. In sinking this shaft, three distinct lines of piles, showing the existence of wharves below the present level of the Thames, were discovered.

March 25, 1843, nineteen years after its commencement, this monument of British stupidity and dogged obstinacy, the Tunnel, was opened to the London public. As an investment it has never paid a dollar; as a convenience it was a swindle on the general public, but for the wild Arabs of London, and the lowest order of shameful women, it rivaled the infamous Adelphi Arches as a rendezvous; calling into existence a distinct class known as Tunnel Thieves, who, conscious of the fact that strangers would naturally visit this much lauded work, were always waiting in secret hiding places to plunder the unsuspecting visitor of his watch or valuables.

To take the place of this absurd tunnel, a Thames Subway has been devised, starting at Tower Hill, and continuing under the bed of the river to a point near Blackfriar's Bridge. The Thames subway is in a manner similar to the Pneumatic Railway. Shafts are sunk on either side of the river, and vehicles constructed like a horse railway car, are used to convey passengers to and fro under the river, for a fare of two pence per head. These vehicles are lighted by lamps, and a conductor is attached to each car. Powerful engines at either end furnish the force which propels these underground vehicles.

tail

---

CHAPTER III.

THE DOCKS, SHIPPING, AND COMMERCE OF THE PORT OF LONDON.

I F you leave King William Street just at the foot of London Bridge, and turn to the left, you will find your way into a grouping of streets, narrow and steep, a few only of which admit of carriage and horse traffic.

This is the region of the world-renowned London Docks, the basins which hold the greatest commerce known to any city on the globe; a commerce before which the ancient traffic of Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, and Sicily, the granary of the ancient world, was as nothing.

The lower stories of the houses in this district, which smell of tar, resin, and other merchantable commodities, are let out as offices, and the upper as warehouse floors; the pavement is narrow and the roads are as bad as broken staves and long neglect can make them; dirty boys in sailor's jackets play at leap frog over the street posts; legions of wheelbarrows encumber the broader part of these thoroughfares; packing cases stand at the doors of houses, and iron cranes and levers peep out from the upper stories.

No man, it has been said, could ever tell how much money lies hidden away in the vaults of the Bank of England, and it is about as difficult to count up the tons of produce which London exports and imports annually.

For instance, during one year, (1865), the number of cargoes entered and cleared coastwise, (which besides British ports includes the shores from the Elbe to Brest,) was 30,820, and their tonnage, 5,263,565.

As many as fifty thousand ships of all classes enter and leave the Thames in twelve months, or about seventy vessels per day, exclusive of all the innumerable kinds of miscellaneous small craft.

The entire French commercial navy consists of twelve thousand vessels, an aggregate of perhaps one million seven hundred thousand tons, a little more than a quarter of the number of ships and the same percentage of tonnage that enters and leaves this world metropolis of London.

If the ships that move to and fro on the bosom of the Thames be supposed to average one hundred and fifty feet in length one with another, they would reach, placed stem and stern together, upward of thirteen hundred miles, or nearly half way across the Atlantic.

CUSTOM HOUSE DUTIES OF LONDON.

The Custom House duties, with a very low tariff for the port of London, during one year amounts to sixty-eight millions of dollars in gold, and the declared real value of exports from London for the same time amounted to one hundred and seventy millions of dollars in gold. The declared real value of the imports registered at the huge granite custom house on the Thames, for the port of London, for 1869, from foreign and colonial ports, was four hundred millions of dollars in gold, or as much as the total value of the real estate on New York island in 1870.

Englishmen are very fond of coffee it seems, for they imported thirty million pounds of the fragrant berry in 1869. The choleric temper of the people may find an explanation in the six million pounds of pepper received in London. London also imported seven million gallons of rum, although it is supposed to be the great beer drinking city of the world. Eighty thousand gallons of gin, sixty million pounds of tea, thirty-eight million pounds of tobacco, nine million six hundred and fifty-seven thousand and thirty-four gallons of foreign wines, two million cwts. of raw sugar, and two million seven hundred sixty-two thousand two hundred and forty-eight gallons of brandy were imported in 1869. These articles of merchandise were all held in bond at the London Custom House, and from these figures my readers may form some idea of the magnitude of the commerce of this great city.

Russia sent one thousand three hundred vessels and received three hundred and ninety-one vessels, Sweden one thousand one hundred and twenty-one vessels and received five hundred and twenty vessels, France sent one thousand four hundred and sixteen vessels and received one thousand three hundred and eighty-two vessels, Holland sent nine hundred and twenty-four vessels and received seven hundred and fourteen vessels, Cuba sent three hundred and twelve vessels and received sixty-two vessels, United States sent four hundred and twelve vessels and received three hundred and seventeen vessels, China sent two hundred and eight vessels and received one hundred and thirty vessels in 1869.

I have not space here to enumerate all the petty nationalities, whose merchants trade with London, but the above table, obtained from the custom house authorities and therefore authentic, may serve to indicate what the trade of London is, and the vast interests which gather there. The United States does not figure so conspicuously as might be expected here, the Alabamas and Floridas perhaps have something to do with the paucity of American commerce with the commercial metropolis of England.

THE COMMERCIAL AND LONDON DOCKS.

The most wonderful of all the London sights are the huge artificial basins, bound in masses of masonry and known as the London Docks. No other city in the world can boast of such magnificent artificial basins, where millions of tons of shipping can be accommodated. It is enough to make an American feel humiliated to pay a visit to these wonderful docks, and to be forced to compare them with the rotten wooden wharves which environ the great city of New York, and which are honored with the title of docks.

The principal docks of London are those which I give below with their water areas, cost, and the number of vessels which they accommodate:

The Commercial Dock is chiefly used by vessels in the oil, corn, timber, and tobacco trade; and there is floating space for fifty thousand loads of lumber, and the warehouses afford storage for one hundred and fifty thousand quarters of corn, while the yards of the company will hold four million pieces of deals, and staves without number. The lock in the South Commercial Dock is two hundred and twenty feet long by forty-eight feet wide, with a depth of twenty-two feet, and will admit vessels of twenty-six feet draught. Five hundred thousand tons of shipping have been received here in a year, representing about one thousand five hundred vessels of various tonnage.

The London Docks extend from East Smithfield to Shadwell and have twelve thousand four hundred and forty feet of wharf frontage, and are intended principally for the reception of vessels laden with wines, brandy, tobacco, and rice.

There are forty warehouses for the storage of merchandise of every description, convenient in arrangement, and magnificent in design and execution. The cubical capacity of the warehouses is two hundred and forty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty tons; two hundred and thirty-one thousand one hundred and forty-seven for dry goods, and eighteen thousand two hundred and eighty-three for wet goods.

The tobacco house in these docks sends its very strong odor all over the Thames, and it is as good as the flavor of a Havana cigar almost to smell this huge warehouse as you pass by on the river in a steamboat. This warehouse is the largest of its kind in the world, covering five acres of ground, and is rented by the government at fourteen thousand pounds a year of the company, for all the London Docks are owned by stock companies, and this perhaps explains the economy displayed in their construction, and their useful adaptability to the commerce of London.

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ENTRANCE TO DOCKS.

The tobacco warehouse will contain twenty-four thousand hogsheads of tobacco, each hogshead holding one thousand two hundred pounds, the total capacity being equal to thirty thousand tons of general merchandise.

THE WINE VAULTS, AND TASTING PERMITS.

Under the London Docks are the finest vaults in the world, vast catacombs of the precious vintages garnered from every famous vineyard in the globe. The vaults in the London docks cover an area of eighteen acres, and afford accommodation for eighty thousand pipes of wine. One of the vaults alone is seven acres in extent, and the tea warehouses will hold one hundred and twenty thousand chests of that fragrant herb.

To go into these vast wine vaults is indeed a treat. It is like entering a City of the dead, only that instead of the skeletons of human beings piled on top of each other, you find an Aceldama of casks, pipes, barrels, hogsheads, and butts, bonded and stored tier upon tier, until the eye becomes wearied, and a man wonders how all those costly vintages can ever be consumed.

There is no difference between night and day in these dim deep recesses under the London streets. The vaults are only separated from the bed of the Thames by a thick wall, and at noonday, gas has to be turned on to light the way to the enormous storehouses of wine and brandy. Passes are granted by the companies and the owners of liquors on bond, called tasting permits, which gives the privilege to the visitor to ask an attendant for a sample of any wine, or wines and liquors that he may choose to taste.

Armed with one of these permits I visited the London docks one day with a friend, and we penetrated the gloomy cavern's entrance, and finally found our way to a part of the vaults where were stored thousands of pipes of the delicious golden brown vintage of Xeres de la Frontera.

My friend was one of those wandering Americans you are always sure to light upon abroad, who makes your acquaintance whether you like it or not, and who cries out frantically whenever he sees a foreign flag.

"By Gad—Sir, that flag is all good enough in its way—but I tell you it does not come up to our flag of beauty and glory—now I'll put it to you—does it?"

A grimy looking cellar man who smelled like an old claret bottle that had long remained uncorked, wearing an apron and carrying a wooden hammer for tapping, came to us and said, politely, on presentation of our orders:

The horders are werry correct, sir. Would you like to try a little old Sherry, sir, fine as a sovrin and sparkling as the sun?

Well, I don't care if I do take a little sherry—I don't think it will hurt me—do you think it will? said my friend.

He then took about half a pint of fine golden sherry, and after taking it he seemed all at once to discover a new beauty in the architecture of the vaults, although he had condemned the place when he entered it, as a chilly, stinking hole, not fit for a dog, by Gad, sir.

While he was delivering himself most eloquently on the merits of the sherry, I had an opportunity to look about me and examine the place.

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I DON'T THINK IT WILL HURT ME.

Different parties were going from cask to cask, from hogshead to hogshead, like my friend, trying each vintage, and tasting brandies, and gins, and wines to their heart's content.

I thought to myself, what a splendid boon these vaults would be to a New York corner loafer, without restriction and with full liberty to drink till he died like a soldier, contending to the last against the enemy which deprives a man of his brains. The attendants here never object to the amount called for, and a tasting permit admits to all the privileges.

We were now standing in an arched alcove devoted exclusively to the wines of Madeira, Teneriffe, and the Canary Islands. Some of these huge casks held as many as seven hundred gallons, and the rich, old, musty and fruity odors that came from them were truly revivifying to my friend, who was loquacious under the influence of the sherry.

This ere sexshin is for the Madeery, said the bung starter. Will you try a little Madeery, sir? said he.

"Well I don't care if I do take a little Madeira—I don't think it will hurt me. Now I put it to you this way—I don't think it will hurt me if I am moderate?"

He seemed to relish this heavy and fruity wine very much, and before he left the alcove he had tasted a good deal of the Canary also smacking his lips lusciously.

There is considerable skill displayed in the building of the arches of the range of vaults, and with the dim lights of the sperm lamps, burning—as it is not deemed safe to have gas in the vaults where spirits are stored—the vaults very much resemble the crypts under the cloisters in Westminster Abbey, or the vaults under St. Paul's.

The method for hoisting cargoes from the holds of ships to the grading, which is level with the opening in the vaults is very perfect. The opening in the wall of the basin or docks is eighteen feet high, and large hogsheads can be hoisted and lowered at once into the vaults instead of being temporarily deposited on the quay.

HOISTING AND DISCHARGING CARGOES.

In the old times before steam had been discovered and these magnificent docks had been built, an East Indiaman of eight hundred tons took a month to discharge her cargo, or if of one thousand two hundred tons, six weeks were required for the labor, and their goods had to be taken from Blackwall to London Bridge in lighters, when they were placed on the quay exposed to dock rats and river thieves as goods are in New York, where the private watchmen on the rotten wooden docks are generally to be found in league with the thieves.

At St. Katharine's Docks the time occupied on an average in discharging a vessel of three hundred tons is eight hours, and for one of six hundred tons two days and a half. In one instance one thousand one hundred casks of tallow were discharged in six hours, but of course this was unusually rapid work. One of the cranes in the St. Katharine's Docks cost about twenty-five thousand dollars, and will raise from forty to sixty tons at a time.

There is a wharf attached to the St. Katharine Docks, which Parliament compelled the company to construct at a cost of nearly a million of dollars, and the warehouses will contain one hundred and ten thousand tons of goods and merchandise. The depth of water in the St. Katharine's Docks is twenty-eight feet at spring tide, at dead tide twenty-four feet, and at low water ten feet, so that vessels of eight hundred tons register are docked and undocked without the slightest difficulty. There is a water frontage and quays of one thousand five hundred feet in the St. Katharine Docks. The wharfage of the London Docks is one thousand two hundred and sixty feet in length and nine hundred and sixty feet in breadth. The capital of the London Docks company is about twenty-five million dollars in gold, and as many as three thousand laborers are employed in the London Docks in a day.

The walls surrounding the London Docks cost sixty-five thousand pounds in construction, and all these walls are so high (nearly thirty feet,) that they present an impregnable barrier to thieves and depredators.

The receipts for one year in the London Docks were over three million dollars, currency; the salaries and wages amounted to about one million dollars, and the revenue customs paid about eleven hundred thousand dollars. These figures show that the company is in a prosperous state, and gives the municipal governments of our American Atlantic cities the best reasons, when others which I have already enumerated are combined, why New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, Savannah and Charleston, should have stone docks to equal those of London and Liverpool in magnitude and solidity.

Having made a lengthened inspection of the London Docks I turned to leave and could not find my friend who had accompanied me. After some difficulty I discovered him afar off at the other end of the vaults discussing with the cellarman what liquor he was next to taste.

Yer honor might just taste a little of the Hennesey Brandy of 1832—it is very fine and runs down like hile.

"By Gad, sir, the very thing—now that you mention it I will try a little, just a leetle Hennesey brandy. I'll put it to you in this way—I don't think it can hurt me—and the cellarman says it's just like oil. Now I recollect that oil never intoxicates. I will take just the faintest tint."

He did take the faintest tint, perhaps a good sized glass-full, and he became so jolly, and affectionate, and good natured, embracing me and also the cellarman, that the latter personage had at last to call a cab into which my friend was carried, and after being propped up he was driven to his hotel. The cellarman said to me:

We've two agents as comes 'ere sober, bless 'em, and goes away drunk; but they hurts nobody but themselves, bless them.

THE WEST INDIA DOCKS.

I went from the London Docks to the West India Docks, about a mile and a half distant, at the Isle of Dogs, a small islet in the Thames near Blackwall. These numerous basins and warehouses occupy three times the space of the London Docks, or about two hundred and ninety-five acres, with a canal three quarters of a mile in length as a feeder. The Import Dock is five hundred and ten feet in length, and about the same measurement in width. The Export Dock is about the same length and is about four hundred feet wide. The docks and warehouse are enclosed by a wall of masonry five feet thick, that seems as if it would endure as long as the port of London is open to commerce and merchandise, and the value of twenty millions of pounds is here stored by its owners.

I gave an employee of the company a shilling to take me through, and he was not at all backward in showing me the treasures under the care of the company.

These are the biggest docks in Lunnun, sir, said he: "say what they will on the other docks. We will hold two hundred million tons of merchandise here, sir, and we will not be crowded at all. Why, sir, I've seen as much as two hundred thousand casks of sugar, five hundred thousand bags of coffee, fifty thousand pipes of Jimaky rum, ten thousand pipes of Madeery, twenty-five thousand tons of logwood, and lots of other things here and we were not full.

I've seen an acre of 'ogsheads of tibaccy, eight feet high, and piles of cinnamon, spices, pepper, indigo, salt pork, hides and leather, Hindian corn, mahogany, and sich like, and no one of us, sir, ever knows the walley of them, and I suppose Mr. Bright hiself would be more nor puzzled to tell the walley, and I've heard as how he has got a preshis head for figgers.

Formerly when steamers employed paddle wheels as a means of locomotion, the docks were very much crowded, but the use of the universal screw has given much more space for berthways. There is, however, great risks in these docks, of fire, from steam vessels, and I believe the rates are much higher for steam craft than for sailing vessels. Small offices and compact frame houses for the company's officers, revenue officers, warehousemen, clerks, engineers, coopers and other petty attachees, have been provided within the ground area of all these stone basins, and everything connected with the docks is done in a systematic and business like way that is truly wonderful. When I recollected that less than fifty years ago London had no inclosed docks at all, and no accommodation for shipping but a long and straggling line of private quays, under the management of firms who had no public interests to serve, (and in fact when the present system of docks was at first proposed it met with almost universal opposition, particularly from the interested parties,) I was amazed at the progress made in a half century.

There is not such a city in the world, perhaps, for the number of corporations, guilds, societies, and titled people, who derive and did derive emolument and income, of one kind or another, from these private quay and wharfage receipts.

OPPOSITION TO THE NEW DOCK SYSTEM.

Therefore when the citizens of London became thoroughly awakened to the possibility of substituting for these rotten old timber wharves and tumble down old stone piers, a thorough, efficient, and lasting system of dockage, the interested people began to clamor most hideously about their vested rights. These two words have always stood in England as a safeguard to protect some oppressive or corporate interest.

The Tackle House and City Porter Companies complained that if the import and export business were removed beyond the city limits, their right to the exclusive privilege of unloading and delivering all merchandise imported into the city would be worthless. The carmen who enjoyed a similar privilege and monopoly made the same complaint, and they stated that Christ's Hospital, an institution much revered by all Londoners, derived an income of four thousand pounds a year from the licenses under which they held their monopoly; the watermen, who were then numbered by thousands, foretold that the establishment of docks would deprive one half of their number of bread; the lightermen stated that they had a capital of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds invested in tackle and craft, employed to transport merchandise, which capital would be annihilated if ships were allowed to discharge their cargoes on quays within docks; the proprietors of the legal quays as they were called, and the sufferance wharves, or wharves which held no legal title, all prophesied that the trade of London would be ruined at once if the new system of docks was established.

However these people differed in some details of their grievances, they all concurred in stating that unloading ships in closed docks would be more expensive than discharging them into lighters in the river.

On the other hand the advocates of the new system estimated on paper that the unloading of five hundred hogsheads of sugar from a vessel could be done in the new docks for about three hundred and fifty dollars of American money less than under the old lighterage and open quay system, to say nothing of the greater safety of the property thus enclosed in dock walls.

Finally, Parliament passed an act creating the new docks and granting a compensation of four hundred and eighty-six thousand and eighty-seven pounds to the proprietors of the legal quays in addition to the sum of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-one pounds which was paid to persons having vested rights in the mooring claims on the river. Altogether the cost of the different London Docks, including ground purchases, etc., was about thirty millions of dollars. The West India Docks were the first opened in 1802, and the citizens of London have, I am sure, no cause to regret the decision which gave them the finest and safest system of wharfage in the world.

The passenger traffic, by water, which